First the actor Jada Pinkett-Smith said she wouldn’t be going in protest. Then director Spike Lee announced he would also be staying away. They were followed by a chorus line of actors and entertainers, all expressing dismay that for the second successive year, the Oscars Academy had failed to nominate a single non-white actor.

But on Friday, the British actor Charlotte Rampling, who did make the exclusive list of nominees, made it clear the sentiment was not universal, telling a French radio station that the row was in fact “racist to white people”.

Asked if the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences should introduce quotas, a proposal that no current advocate of increased diversity has mooted, she responded: “Why classify people? These days everyone is more or less accepted ... People will always say: ‘Him, he’s less handsome’; ‘Him, he’s too black’; ‘He is too white’ ... someone will always be saying ‘You are too...’, but do we have to take from this that there should be lots of minorities everywhere?”

Her remarks prompted an immediate and heated response on social media, where the controversy has assumed the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite. “MISSING: A set of marbles,” wrote the journalist and TV presenter Piers Morgan on Twitter. “If found, please return to Charlotte Rampling.”

Charlotte Rampling: I regret that Oscars racism comment was 'misinterpreted'

Read more

Rampling’s stance on diversity is in stark contrast to the views of a number of her fellow nominees. Mark Ruffalo, nominated for best supporting actor for Spotlight,said he supported reasons behind the plan to boycott the ceremony on 28 February as “the nominations are not representative of our community” – though after mulling over the decision he said he would attend to support victims of child abuse, an issue his film addresses. Brie Larson, nominated in the same category as Rampling for Room, said the diversity issue “deserves attention”.

They have been joined by others including Will Smith – who some feel was unfairly overlooked for his performance in Concussion – and George Clooney, who told Variety: “If you think back 10 years ago, the Academy was doing a better job. Think about how many more African Americans were nominated. I think around 2004, certainly there were black nominees – like Don Cheadle, Morgan Freeman. And all of a sudden, you feel like we’re moving in the wrong direction.”

At 69, however, Rampling may find herself more representative of the voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences than others who have spoken publicly. An analysis by the Los Angeles Times in 2014 found that the 6,000-plus members are 93% white and 76% male, with an average age of 63.

“The Academy has a problem,” said the British actor David Oyelowo, addressing an award ceremony last Monday to honour its president, Cheryl Boone Isaacs. Oyelowo’s omission from last year’s list of nominees, following his much-praised performance as Martin Luther King in Selma, prompted a similar controversy.

He told the ceremony that the 89-year-old institution “doesn’t reflect its president and it doesn’t reflect this room. I am an Academy member and it doesn’t reflect me, and it doesn’t reflect this nation”.

Options under consideration include increasing the number of best picture nominations from five to 10, as happened in 2010 and 2011, and doing the same in the acting categories for the first time, the New York Times reported. More controversial steps might include removing voting rights from those who have not been active in the film industry in the past decade, the paper said.

Will Smith in a scene from Concussion. Photograph: Melinda Sue Gordon/AP

Oyelowo, in his remarks, referred to the comparative speed at which the Civil Rights Act had been introduced in the US in 1965, given the necessary political will.

“The Academy is an institution in which they all say radical and timely change cannot happen quickly. It better happen quickly. The law of this country can change in a matter of months. It better come on.”

Matt Mueller, editor of film industry trade magazine Screen International, said Rampling’s comments were unlikely to help her Oscars cause in the current environment.

“Charlotte is the rank outsider in this category so I don’t think her Oscar chances were all that strong even before the French radio interview,” he said. “But certainly these comments aren’t going to help her cause. They will not go down well with American Oscar voters at all.”

Rampling, whose career breakthrough came in the 1966 drama Georgy Girl, has never previously been nominated for an Oscar, though she has been given multiple other awards including the Legion d’Honneur in France, where she lives.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Friday, Michael Caine advised black actors to be patient, and said it had taken him “years to get an Oscar, years”. The 82-year-old star has won two – for Hannah and Her Sisters in 1986 and The Cider House Rules in 1999.

Caine added: “In the end you can’t vote for an actor because he’s black. You can’t say ‘I’m going to vote for him, he’s not very good, but he’s black, I’ll vote for him’. You have to give a good performance and I’m sure people have. I saw Idris Elba [in Beasts Of No Nation] ... I thought he was wonderful.”